Processing data of HDR cameras is required in a variety of technical fields. Particularly, in automotive applications HDR cameras are used to provide images of a driving path in order to enable e.g. obstacle detection, traffic sign recognition, or lane recognition. The cameras used in automotive applications can e.g. cover a wide dynamic range of up to 120 dB. This dynamic range can be achieved by using multiple exposures followed by a fusion on the imager chip.
Usually, the image data generated by a camera corresponds to the camera behavior which can be described by a piecewise linear transition curve with multiple slopes and/or knee points.
The camera image can be companded before being outputted from the camera. The image thus outputted/generated by the camera can consume 12-14 bits per pixel, wherein the corresponding original linear HDR data would even cover a data range of more than 16 and up to 32 bits per pixel.
Automotive applications typically require a fast image processing without the use of high-end components. However, working with images having 16 or 32 bits per pixel can be time consuming and requires a lot of memory bandwidth and processing power.